This is just an idea to engage the community and highlight the highest voted and most viewed questions of 2016 on Sports SE. This is similar to when we used to have self-evaluations.

In March, NCAA "March Madness" takes over the college basketball world. In The Clubhouse, we enter a competition among ourselves to see who can produce the best bracket (a sample bracket is shown below).

Taking that concept, I wonder if we can take the 16 highest voted questions and the 16 most viewed questions of 2016 and insert them into a bracket against each other. Most likely, there will be overlap, so it's more like the 16 highest voted questions and the 16 most viewed questions that aren't in the highest voted category. I'm not sure if we commingle them or place them separately (a highest voted division and a most viewed division).

Then, we can take one week per round in order to give our users plenty of time to cast their vote (probably through comments rather than up/down vote - one vote per user). An exception will be the quarterfinal round, which will take two weeks (so that we have no more than 8 matchups per voting round). With my currently proposed bracket, this would take 5 weeks (if we start the last week of February, this coincides with the conclusion of March Madness in the beginning of April):

Feb 27 - Mar 5: Quarterfinal round - highest voted division

Mar 6 - Mar 12: Quarterfinal round - most viewed division

Mar 13 - Mar 19: Sweet 16

Mar 20 - Mar 26: Elite 8

Mar 27 - Apr 2: Final 4

Apr 3 - Apr 9: Championship

Not only will we identify a "question of the year," but we can also provide votes and answers to questions that may have gone unnoticed in a user's eyes. Again, this is just a concept, so any thoughts and suggestions are appreciated.

The highest voted questions can be found here. The most viewed questions can be found here. In the event of a tiebreaker for highest voted (I count 16 questions at +11 or more), I was thinking of choosing based on least viewed among the questions at +11 (as some +11 questions will qualify for the most viewed category). The questions that don't make it in the highest voted category, if applicable, can be inserted into the most viewed category. 16 questions at +11 or more works perfectly for my proposed bracket.

@BenMiller Good question. I'm leaning toward keeping that in because I was looking solely at votes and nothing else. In the event of a change, this question at +10 and 133 views will be H16 and the question about Jesse Owens will take over H15.
– user527Jan 24 '17 at 13:21

NOTE: It looks like we're going with proposal 1, given no objections toward it.

Proposal 1:

If a matchup ends in a 0-0 tie, their opponent in the next round gets a bye. If a matchup ends in a tie, both questions move on to create a 3-way matchup in the next round.

If the finals end in a tie, a sudden death vote by the next user (who hasn't yet voted for that matchup) to comment (after the stated time frame) will determine a winner. If the third-place matchup ends in a tie, both questions will share third place.

Proposal 2:

If an H division matchup ends in a tie, the following tie-breakers are used:

most votes

highest ratio of votes and views (this determined H rankings)

(or use most views as a tie-breaker)

If an V division matchup ends in a tie, the following tie-breakers are used:

most views

(or use most votes or highest ratio of votes and views as a tie-breaker)

If the finals end in a tie, a sudden death vote by the next user (who hasn't yet voted for that matchup) to comment (after the stated time frame) will determine a winner. If the third-place matchup ends in a tie, both questions will share third place.

Tiebreak by sudden death. Nobody decides the winner of a drawn match based on who had a higher rank before the tournament.
– NijJan 29 '17 at 3:11

To be clear, are we suggesting proposal 1? Or a sudden death format throughout all rounds? I'm wary of that because it would logjam. I would hope that people who will vote would have already voted...and the deciding vote may take a while to come.
– user527Jan 30 '17 at 13:12

This comes rather late but here is a brief suggestion for voting system. (Probably too late to change something for the on-going round, but perhaps it is worth to think about this for the remaining rounds. Or for the similar tournament next year.)

If I understand the current way, each vote is supposed to be individual comment. (To make sure, I asked the OP in chat.)

I think that an easier way would be to use upvotes on the comments to count votes.

Either immediately after an answer with two competing questions is posted, two comments could be added. (With an explanation saying something like: "Upvote on this comment means vote for Q1.)

Or the first vote could be done by posting a comment and all consequent votes for the same question could be upvotes on that comment.

Personally I would prefer the first possibility, since it seems that it is less confusing.

Of course, if we are talking about 5 or 10 votes, this does not make much difference. (It is not that much work to expand 10 comments and check which of them were posted in the given time span and count votes for each of the two questions among them.) However, if about 25 people take part in the voting, this could become rather cumbersome.

On disadvantage to the system I am suggesting is that comments have timestamps and votes on comment don't. So the comments can get additional votes after the given round ends. This can be solved by edit to an answer or a comment which summarizes the tally at the end of the round.

Good suggestion. Good point on the disadvantage. We'd also need someone to edit the answer at the end of the round for tally (I'm sure I'm not awake when this happens). Another "disadvantage" (although I'm not sure if it is either here or there) is that the comment system is intended to promote a community feel (ie, a user is making his/her voice heard and known). If we do upvotes on comments or upvotes/downvotes, it isn't as much of a community feel (though I'm sure that can be debated).
– user527Feb 28 '17 at 13:32

Another minor advantage of voting on comments (rather than posting new comments) is less notifications to the user who posted the answer. (I know that it is possible to disassociate post from the owner, but that would need involvement of SE staff.)
– MartinMar 1 '17 at 11:32

This is exactly the essence of what we're going to do, but it brings up the question...what do we do about ties?
– user527Jan 27 '17 at 13:21

Yeah, defining a tie-breaker would be needed. Perhaps just something like which question has been around longer or which H question has more views compared to which V question has more votes?
– jamauss♦Jan 27 '17 at 17:37

I was thinking along the lines of having both questions go through, then have a 3-way battle in the next round...unless the vote is 0-0, then their opponent in the next round would get a bye. For H questions, less time on the site or less views would actually win the tie breaker if both questions are tied in votes. For V questions, votes should be good enough, followed by time on site before views are considered. I'll put together a post explaining our ideas.
– user527Jan 27 '17 at 19:27

It seems a bit excessive for sport alone, as it wouldn't bring many new questions to the forefront and yet would be a lot of questions to look at/attention diverted. And just not sure you'd get many/meaningful votes, we don't have that many people heavily active. Despite having a fairly unhealthy interest in unique bracketology in the past, I'm not sure I'd really participate that much. Nor am I sure that I see much benefit/point to such an exercise.

But just maybe it'd prove a little interesting in spicing up the entire SE network if expanded to the wider field. Each (relatively active) SE site auto-qualifies one question, then some criteria (or small representative committee) could determine additional questions to fill out the field and setup the bracket. It'd could be 64, 128, or 256 questions.
Add on some suggested voting details to consider (questions that were useful, that solved common misunderstanding, that made you think, that had answers that taught you some thing(s) in a novel/clear way).
Or could use such subtypes as a guide to separate out into regions if wished.

Run it concurrent with March Madness. And maybe you're on to something.

Thanks for the perspective. 1) We're not flooded with new questions to the point where this would be a diversion. 2) Voting for a question in this tournament isn't meant to be meaningful (maybe the "voting details" you suggest can be left as a comment to conjure discussion)...but perhaps taking another look at the question might produce an answer, a vote, or anything that was otherwise overlooked...that's where it would be meaningful.
– user527Feb 10 '17 at 18:55

"And just not sure you'd get many/meaningful votes, we don't have that many people heavily active." This is a way to address this. If you have another way, feel free to share. It's fine if it isn't your cup of tea as there's no requirement to vote. As far as extending this beyond to all of SE, that's a different discussion that is outside the scope of this site. We're doing what we can for this site including running it concurrent with March Madness and promoting community involvement. Again, this is proof of concept, and if it falls flat on its face, at least we tried.
– user527Feb 10 '17 at 18:59

And please don't take the comments as critical, about 10 years ago we spent days putting together a tournament bracket addition to a weather forecasting competition we were in, and arguing it through. It's just that I think it's going to put the same questions in front of us we're seeing anyways. And if anything draw our attention to the good/well answered questions where we could rather use attention on unanswered ones. I'm not saying it can't work, I just don't see quite the benefit/attention to make it worthwhile, particularly if it became an annual thing.
– JeopardyTempestFeb 10 '17 at 19:08

But I'm quite behind the idea as a whole. It's all about the details/tweaking as to whether it flies. I still think it works better on the site as a whole, and will put together a proof bracket for entire site.
– JeopardyTempestFeb 10 '17 at 19:09

1

Not at all, your input is appreciated. Regarding seeing the same questions we already do, I'll say that for half of them in my proposed bracket, I wasn't intimately familiar with (and I see a majority of questions coming in). Point being, for a less frequent user, these questions may have been more overlooked.
– user527Feb 10 '17 at 19:13

Again, the benefit/attention isn't necessarily only in reviewing an otherwise overlooked question but in community involvement. This, if for no other reason, would be something fun to engage in just to see what the question was for 2016. That's the benefit/point.
– user527Feb 10 '17 at 19:16